In the British county of Suffolk, there is an unremarkable village of Woolpit. Its name comes from the Old English wulf-pytt, which means "wolf pit". It was here in the 12th century that the last English wolf was caught using such a pit. However, it was not this entertaining fact that brought the village of Woolpit worldwide fame.
In the same XII century, a rather strange event took place here, a rational explanation for which has not yet been found.
Green children on the coat of arms of Woolpit
FROM CASE No. 93875
This event is described in detail in the book Chronicum Anglicanum by Ralph of Koggeschel, abbot of the Koggeschel monastery in Essex. Perhaps historians would have attributed the testimony of a little-known abbot to his impressionability, if this story had not been brought almost word for word by William of Newburgh, author of Historia rerum Anglicarum - one of the most important sources on the history of 12th century Britain.
Today this scientific work is kept in the British Museum under number 3875. William of Newburgh was a very objective man and erudite, and therefore he himself expressed doubts about the veracity of the events described. He writes that at first he did not believe this story, but further investigation convinced him of its truth. At the same time, the historian reported a number of details that were absent in the story of Abbot Ralph.
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HISSING SOUNDS
The story in question began on a hot August day in 1173, while harvesting wheat. The peasants suddenly saw two frightened children emerge from one of the wolf pits.
The girl looked no more than ten years old, and the boy was about seven. The children squinted in the bright sunlight and waved their arms as if they were brushing off bees.
Their clothes were bright green and strange cut, but nevertheless clean and expensive in appearance. Even stranger, their hair and skin were the same bright green. The children tried to say something to the peasants who surrounded them, but they did not understand a word. Their language was unlike any of the languages known to the inhabitants of the village, and was replete with whistling and hissing sounds.
It should be noted that in those days, even ordinary peasants, in addition to their native English, understood French, Dutch and German well, as well as the Celtic dialects of the Welsh, Irish and Scots.
They still remembered the recent invasion of the Normans, and the king Stephen of Blois, the grandson of William the Conqueror, who ruled England at that time, was French by birth. However, the language spoken by the children did not resemble human speech at all.
BEAN CHILDREN
The perplexed peasants decided to take the children to the local landowner, Sir Richard de Kellne. Sir Richard gazed at the "little frogs" for some time, and then ordered them to be fed. But something went wrong. Despite the fact that the children showed signs that they were hungry, they flatly refused the offered food.
The servants, knocking off their feet, offered them more and more food, but the children with all their appearance made it clear that all this was inedible for them. At some point, a maid entered the hall with a basket filled with freshly picked green beans. The girl, barely seeing the basket, pointed her finger at it. Having received the coveted basket, the children pounced on the beans and began to greedily devour it right in the pods.
Sir Richard was a kind man and took in orphans in his castle. At first, the children ate exclusively on beans. The servants taught them to open the pods and get the beans out of them. The kids loved this idea and quickly learned to peel beans. Gradually, they began to accustom them to ordinary human food, and their diet began to expand.
At the same time, their skin began to acquire a normal color, and after a few months they almost did not differ outwardly from the local children. Both were blond with blue eyes. After a while, the children were christened. True, the boy, who looked sick from the very beginning, soon died of an unknown illness and was buried in the local cemetery. The girl survived and remained in the education of Richard de Keln.
LAND OF SAINT MARTIN
A year later, the girl was already fluent in English and was able to tell what really happened to them. According to her, she and her brother lived in an area called Saint Martin's Land. In their homeland the sun never rises and the day is like twilight, and at night complete darkness descends on the earth. A thick fog constantly swirls in the air, and all people are bright green.
Where is this Land of St. Martin, the girl could not explain. One day their father sent them with their brother to shepherd the sheep. The children were sitting in the grass when a large luminous ball appeared in front of them, emitting a buzzing like a bee. Curious children approached the curiosity to see it, but suddenly a swirl of fog appeared in front of them and sucked them inside the ball.
Both of them lost consciousness, and woke up in a cave. Seeing the bright sunlight, they got out of this cave and found themselves in a wheat field, where they noticed strangers and rushed to them for help.
DESCENDANTS OF AGNESS
The girl, baptized as Agnes, grew up and married a young man, Richard Barr, of King's Lynn, Norfolk. She received a good education, corresponding to her status (even as a child, she showed remarkable mental abilities). Agnes lived with Richard Barr for more than a quarter of a century, having outlived her husband by 30 years and giving birth to two children. She died at a venerable age in 1238.
One line of descendants of Agnes Barr ends in 1348, and her distant descendants in the second line have survived to this day.
One of the famous descendants of the green girl today is Richard Ivor (Lord Richard), a British Labor politician, former leader of the House of Lords and Lord Keeper of the Little Seal under the government of Margaret Thatcher.
Today he serves as a member of the Privy Council of Her Majesty the Queen of England.
VERSIONS ARE FAILED
All attempts to rationalize this story have come to nothing. The green color of the skin and hair of children does not find any logical explanation. It has nothing to do with pollution or paint, as the children were washed and changed immediately. This color faded gradually as their diet changed.
The language they spoke also remains a mystery. The appearance of foreign children in a medieval English village looks even more like fantasy than moving them from a parallel world.
Some researchers suggest that children fled copper mines, where child labor was widely used in the Middle Ages. This version partially explains the green tint of their skin and hair. But the children were well-dressed and well-mannered, smart beyond their years.
The area called Saint Martin's Land also remains unknown. Saint Martin of Tours was popular in France. But it is difficult to imagine that the English settlement could be named after someone else's saint. And the climatic conditions of the area described by the children have no analogues on our planet.
If, nevertheless, the children really escaped from the mine and came up with a story about a fantastic country and movement in space so that they would not be returned to the mine, then how to explain the fact that they were unfamiliar with earthly food? They didn't even know how to peel beans - the most common plant in medieval England.
Another interesting version of this whole story was offered by the journalist of the Fortin Times newspaper Paul Harris in 1991. He suggested that we are talking about children from the troupe of itinerant actors who got lost and for many years wandered in a dense green forest, not seeing sunlight and eating pasture. But this version does not hold water either.
Some researchers have suggested that green children did not belong to the homo sapiens species at all, but this version is easily broken by the facts. Not only did the children quickly adapt to new conditions and ceased to differ from their peers, the girl still got married and gave birth to full-fledged offspring, which completely excludes the version about the genetic differences between children and ordinary people.
This story remains one of the most amazing in the world. Many generations of physicists, anthropologists, ethnographers, cosmologists and esotericists have searched and will continue to seek answers to the questions that a girl and a boy posed to them more than 800 years ago.
Oleg NANCHAYANY
